Field
The disclosed embodiments generally relate to techniques for automatically identifying people. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to a person-identification technique that uses WiFi® signals to identify a person within a smart indoor space.
Related Art
There has been an increasing interest in offloading the functionality of user's smart devices to the infrastructure surrounding the user. Embedding sensing, computation and communication capabilities in the environment, such as a home or an office, can allow a person to be truly “device-free,” while still receiving the same services that are otherwise available through portable/wearable devices like smartphones. Such intelligent environments are often referred to as “smart spaces.” Numerous applications can be enabled with the realization of smart spaces. However, many of these applications require a person to carry a portable electronic device, such as a smartphone. For example, the process of counting the number of steps walked by a person requires the person to constantly carry a device, such as a smartphone or fitness band, at all times even while at home. Similarly, tracking sleep behavior requires a person to wear a sleep-tracking device even during sleep. The need to carry or wear a device creates a great deal of discomfort for the user and also inaccuracy in associated measurements when the user does not wear the device as suggested. With the emergence of smart spaces, such sensing and activity-tracking functionality can be performed by the environment (home or office) itself, relieving people of the need to constantly wear smart devices.
However, enormous challenges stand in the way of truly realizing smart spaces. Tracking a person's actions in a smart space requires sensing the person's actions without any physical interaction with the person. Moreover, the task of identifying a person is a prerequisite for activity recognition, because without knowing the identity of a person, it is not possible to associate a sensed activity with the person. For example, if a system can identify a person who is in the home, a detected activity, such as cooking, can be associated with that person. In general, the ability to identify a person can facilitate many applications in smart spaces. For example, when a smart home detects that a specific one of five family members has entered the home, it can use the identity of the family member to trigger person-specific customization, such as adjusting room temperature according to preferences of the person, providing a content recommendation tailored to the person on a television, and starting a coffee machine for the person if the person typically drinks coffee. It can also facilitate Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications that might be otherwise infeasible without knowing the person's identity.
Existing techniques for identifying a person rely on the person performing an affirmative action, such as swiping an ID card or using a thumb-print scanner. However, it is inconvenient for a person to have to perform affirmative actions to identify themselves every time they enter a smart space. It is also possible to use a camera and an associated image-processing system to recognize a person. However, the use of cameras in homes and offices creates significant privacy concerns.
Hence, what is needed is a technique for automatically identifying a person in a smart space without the drawbacks of the above-described existing techniques.